Panahon ng Cuaresma ng Nilisan Kami ni Tatay (It Was During the Lenten Season When Tatay Left Us)

Today I woke up sobbing. Tomorrow will be Palm Sunday, and I will go to mass. According to the Roman Catholic calendar, tomorrow will be exactly a year since I last spoke to my father. My father and I talked on the phone during last year’s Palm Sunday. He called me and asked if I already heard mass. I said I would, and I did. I went to hear the last Mass of that day. He will leave us forever, after two days.

I can’t talk about the pain. Grief as love, knows no bounds. I can not talk about that which I can not fully comprehend. All I’m certain of when Tatay left is that I could never truly smile, or laugh again. I have smiled since then, but my eyes betray my lips I know. And I have laughed out loud so many times afterwards, but they wouldn’t stand up, even to the gentlest of winds.

I have never known my father the way I want to know him. I know that he was the best father. But every child thinks that. I know that he was religious. His calloused knees and litany of praise tells me that. I know that he was color blind, his laughter every time I asked him what color I am wearing betrays otherwise. I know that he is intelligent. When looking at his work related papers, I saw that his IQ was above average and rated as such. I know that he loved politics and never got tired of reading the papers and watching the news. He loved learning, he always have a dictionary and thesaurus in his luggage, and a bagful of questions from me every time we talk (he considers me as having a brain that I actually use). And I know that he was forgiving, because he never ceased to love me, to love us.

But I really never knew the man. I have patches and snippets of his childhood, of his youth, of him as an employee, as a husband, son, brother, and friend. I have never known him wholly. I know him as my father. Sometimes, it’s enough though.

I learned about myself when he left me. I learned my strength. I learned my tolerance. And I learned just how far I could hurt. I died that day.

When my father arrived, in the house he built when we were young, and the home we grew up in, I was the one who welcomed him. I did not want to. I wanted to tell the man who brought him to go somewhere else. That he got the wrong address. My father would call me and ask if I went to mass on Easter Sunday, I’m sure. Or if I had taken out the grills in my room as he wanted me to do when we last talked, “Anak, patanggal mo ung bakal sa bintana mo, baka magka sunog, wala pang dalawang minuto tupok yang pwesto,” he counseled. But I can no longer beat around the bushes. And so I went and embraced him. I could not cry but I know that my tears were falling like rain. I did not say anything. I can not move my lips.

My Nanay and my only sister never got the courage to look at Tatay when he went home to us for good. When every one else have taken the time to look at Tatay, I went and I looked at him. I had to, just to be sure. The assurance I got left me to pieces. I never did find the rest of me that day. And I know I never will.

Everything was blurred after that. I never knew exactly what transpired. All I know is that I shielded Nanay, and so I took care of things. I was the one who did the grocery, who accepted the gifts, who talked to the well wishers. I am grateful up to now that I could never fully recall things.

I can not believe how the times passed by. This coming holy Tuesday (it was holy Tuesday last year when Tatay went to chase the white light), we will officially end our family’s year of mourning. I would stop wearing black. There will be a small gathering where prayers will be said, and where I, and the rest of my siblings (Nanay is in the US) will be asked to wear a black veil during the prayers, after which will be taken off, thus the term, babang luksa. I dread the time. I know it might bring back memories that I am still not ready to meet just yet. And I fear that I might loose Tatay one more time, in letting go of the pain, in letting go of the black shirts and blouses that I have worn for the past year. I know that you never loose a person when that person is in your heart. I just can’t rationalize why I feel this way. I really don’t know.

Tomorrow is Palm Sunday.

**I had to edit this entry before I posted it finding that I talked about my father in the present tense, e.g. he is color blind. I changed everything, and did it in the past tense. I never thought that verb tense could break my heart. I was so wrong.

the man i met met a man

I met a man today. He told me that he met a man. The man he met used to be my man. Oh man…no man. I could have just as easily said oh sh*t, no sh*t, but that would disrupt the pattern I am trying to establish.

Patterns, I hate them. But what can I say, we are ruled by patterns. They make the world we live in less chaotic, but not less simple. See, it could have been simpler to say simpler, but there goes pattern… sometimes we don’t want them, but we surely need them.

I remember a text message I received years ago, quoting the book about a boy, it says: surely all men are islands, but some are island chains, underneath, they are connected. Well, I for sure would want to believe that all men are island chains. I would want to believe that we thrive because we meet people, we share our interests, and after all those, we respect our differences. But these are all rhetoric. I don’t want to be rhetorical. I want to be precise.

So, I’ll be precise.

I choose my friends. And my reason for choosing them varies. Sometimes because I like how they think, at other times because they like how I think. But point is I start with the basic assumption that there must be some form of common ground. After all who would want to celebrate birthdays with a bunch of warm bodies that would not know how many candles in the cake you’re blowing out, or who would want to drink a bottle or two of beer with parched mouths who do not speak the language you understand. I would not want to watch a movie I pay so dearly for only to be asked in the middle of a comedy whether we could have enjoyed it better watching a mushy and tragic sci-fi movie, if there is such a thing. Oh wait, star wars is a hit. There is such a thing.

It hurts badly therefore when your carefully hand picked friends still leave you. The goodbyes send you to brain busting, life changing searches. You search for reasons, meanings, and then later on scrap the answers and search again. You sometimes get lost in the process and wake up loosing yourself. Problem is, after the quality controlled, vacuum sealed, sterilized search for people who you want to share your life with, every once in a while you come across a mutant. More problems arise when you suddenly realized that the mutant that sprouted from your carefully controlled search is a mutant you have mutated with. A mutant you have learned to love. Every one loves a friend. If you do not love your friend, then you are no friends with that friend and you should simply save your time and close this window. Call the friend-you-do-not-love some other name. But don’t call that person friend. And stop reading this already!

Those of you, who have ever loved a friend and loose that friend, stay with me. We understand each other, and afterwards, call me, if we are not yet friends, we could build on this.

There are so many pains one encounters. You get bitten by a dog, it hurts. You tripped while you’re going to the canteen, the laughter from the spectators smarts, even more than the searing pain in your ankle. You love a friend, he dumps you. You think you’d die. It hurts more knowing you survived to feel the pain. You love a friend and leave him later on; you just don’t hurt, alone. You hurt the other too. That is pain multiplied. And anything that is related to math e.g. multiplication, division, etc, is just excruciating.

In the end, I can not say what friendship really is. I can say how painful it is to loose a friend though. And the pain is enough to make me understand that friendships are nourished, every day.

I am older now. I would want to hope not by age, but by experience. Sometimes however, hopes are just hopes. And as I look back on hopefully experiences, and not years, I see so many people that came and went and stayed. I see them, I see myself. I am marked by all the people I met, I came across with, I stumbled upon, I tripped, I obstructed. Everyone I embraced. The kid who steps inside a jeepney wiping shoes and begging for alms, the woman breastfeeding her child in the middle of a market, the grand dad bringing his apo to school, the father who teaches his child to cross the street, the teenager who buys a stick of Marlboro lights. But few I kept and walked with. They are my friends. I realized it doesn’t matter anymore if they said goodbye.

thank you

i am in a trance. ambiguities... ambiguities...

today, your day, i live. And die, over and over and over.

i would want to tell you this,

now that i still possess the strength to reminisce you,

now that courage is still in my heart

to go back to the memories

that you so willingly marked my life with,

now that i know no matter where i will be found

from this day forward,

that i will never feel the same way

as you made me feel

since your path crossed mine...

it is not that you are the best that i have met.

it is that i chose to so treasure what we had.

keep it in a place where no shadows could darken it,

no frost could make it shatter.

it is not that you have given me the best that i had.

it is that i chose to take from you

what my courage would permit me,

and draw strength from it,

strength that would sustain my happiness and demise.

you have been my constant, not that i have been yours.

but that you gave me what my soul has been longing to have.

you have given me enough to know that i long,

i fly, i ache, and i laugh. you have given me peace.

you made me human.

you gave me the chance to know

what death could take away from me,

and what a single smile could taste like.

it is not that you are my knight in shining armour,

or that i have been the damsel in distress,

it is that i have learned to build my castles

and not fear that they are just made up in the air.

you have made me known the importance of dreams,

for what else would i have of you,

if not for them?

thank you.

COOKIE JAR MONEY, ANIME LOOKING GIRLS AND THE DEPARTED

I had to go to manila last week. My siblings have run out of cookie jar money and I have to refurbish the supply. Plus, I really want to see my youngest brother and get updated on what he’s been up to. It is so much easier then when we were just kids having petty fights about whose turn it is to have command over the selection of tv shows. As we grow older, the relationship has taken a new turn. Now I’m not just the competition for tv show selection, I’m also the nosy sister who keeps on insisting that at 21, he’s still too young to keep a serious romantic relationship. How times have changed.

Anyway, it was with the intent to bring them their allowance and to sarcastically discuss the grave sin committed in dating anime looking girls that I came across the best picture in the latest oscar awards. The departed starred Jack Nicholson, Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, and a whole bunch of other big names in Hollywood. Directed by Martin Scorsese, the movie gave him his first oscar award for best director after a long line of master-pieces. I have often wondered why this is Martin’s first oscar award, when every movie he ever made was considered a masterpiece. This however is a different story, and should I remember, would write something about. Back to my tripping over the movie... It was so late when I arrived in manila that I was almost snoring even before I reached the REM stage. My kid brother wanted to talk however, and wouldn’t let me sleep. He wanted to have a casual talk, as he was bound to want whenever he sees me really having a hard time keeping my eyes open. Not that he wants to keep updated on what I have been doing, no brother would want that, its just that he feels happy seeing I’m annoyed. Well, we compromised in the end, so instead of having our casual talk, we decided to watch a movie instead. Not in the cinemas. It was too late and I was too tired to pick my ass and go to the mall. We instead took out our 12 in 1 dvd and started discussing whether to watch saw 3 or the departed. He wanted saw 3 because he knows I would squirm in the gross details of decapitation and death, I wanted the departed because the movie is what the movie is. I won this time.

it was almost your usual film about dirty cops and mafia. Almost, because it had a twist. The twist however was not so much of a twist. In the class of boyscout knots, it would only go up to level three, the ones you can untie in about 10 minutes or so. There was this cop who was raised by a mafia man. He was groomed to be a cop by his surrogate dad so that he can serve the mafia dad’s evil purpose later on. And then, there was this cop who came from a family of criminals. This cop-from-a-criminal-family however wanted to be a real cop, wings, halo, and all. They both performed their duties. The cop-with-mafia-dad pretended to be a good cop so that he could have access to everything his mafia dad would want to have access on. In the outside, he was your ideal cop. The cop-from-a-criminal-family however, can only be good at what he does by being an under cover agent. In the outside, he was your ideal gangster. The gangster was the real cop, the real cop was the gangster. Ironic. And confusing. In the end, they both end up dead. The ideal cop from the outside died without honor. The ideal gangster from the outside died as a criminal but was buried with a 21-gun salute.

it was not a heavy film, and as my friends have pointed out, it doesn’t have the twist to left you drooling and needing a brain surgery afterwards. However, it is so real that you could almost smell the gun powder. How many of us have wanted something and yet are forced to completely do the opposite of what we want to later on have a shot of having what we want. Peter piper picked a pack of pickled pepper, a pack of pickled pepper peter piper picked… how many of us have to skip a day or two of our class just to be able to work so that we could earn the tuition fee we so badly need to finish school. Or how many of us have to work abroad and leave our family behind so that our family could stay together and have a wonderful life. How many have washed their clothes, wanting to wash the dishes instead. See, life is full of ironic choices and pseudo choices. We want something, we do the opposite. I want to sleep, so I drink coffee and sit in front of the PC.

I loved the departed, because my religion taught me that the souls in their transparent almost creepy state can still be saved. Oh, wait, that is a different departed. See how confuse you get when you want to sleep and drink coffee instead….

I love the departed because it told a simple story, a true story. It is us who determine how we live our life. We are not bound by the circumstances, we are freed by them.